Tag Archives: portion sizes

Portion Sizes can be tricky to get right and yet they are key to maintaining a healthy, balanced diet.

Here is a little video I did with BBC Food a few months ago, shot in the most gorgeous kitchen (it’s not mine!).

Using your hand as a general guide can be a great way of judging portions and it also means it works well for children and adults.

I’d love to know your thoughts. How do you judge your portions? Other great way to do this are to create your own measuring cup. Using a mug weigh out the standard serving and then place it in a mug, mark a line for that food (rice, pasta, cereals). Or for carbohydrates there is a lovely carb spoon that I actually use myself at home.

Portion control. It’s key if you want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight and it’s usually carbohydrates that are the tricky customers. Now you could weigh foods out each time, but that can lead to obsessive tendencies in some and isn’t always that practical. I much prefer that people use household measure such as spoons, cups and mugs rather than the scales.

So here are some examples of how you can measure out your portion sizes of some common carbohydrate foods.

Why not do this yourself at home? Weigh out portion sizes and then place them in a suitable cup/mug/measuring device. We keep a cup in our rice container ready to measure out perfect portions everytime we cook. Give it a go and let me know how you get on.